Chapter 15. Case Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is a management practice for automating tasks that are repeatable and have a common pattern. However, many applications in the real world cannot be described completely from start to finish and include multiple paths, deviations, and exceptions. Moreover, using a process focused approach in certain cases can lead to complex solutions that are hard to maintain. Sometimes business users need more flexible and adaptive business processes without the overly complex solutions. In such cases, human actors play an important role in solving complex problems. Case management is for collaborative and dynamic tasks that require human actions. Case management focuses on problem resolution for unpredictable process instances as opposed to the efficiency-oriented approach of Business Process Management for routine predictable tasks.

Instead of trying to model a process from start to finish, the case management approach supports giving the end user the flexibility to decide what must happen at runtime. In its most extreme form for example, case management does not require any process definition at all. Whenever a new case comes in, the end user can decide what to do next based on all of the case data.

This does not necessarily mean that there is no role for BPM in case management. Even at its most extreme form, where no process is modeled up front, you may still need a lot of the other features that the BPM system provides. For example, BPM features like audit logs, monitoring, coordinating various services, human interaction (such as using task forms), and analysis play a crucial role in case management as well. There can also be cases where a more structured business process evolves from case management. Thus, a flexible BPM system enables you to decide how and where you can apply it.

Here are some common use cases of case management:

Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite provides a wrapper API called casemgmt that focuses on exposing the case management concepts. The core process engine has always contained the flexibility to model adaptive and flexible processes. These features are typically also required in the context of case management. To simplify picking up some of these more advanced features, the wrapper API exposes some of these features in a simple API. Note that this API simply relies on other existing features and APIs, and can easily be extended. The API and implementation is added as part of the jbpm-case-mgmt module.

public String getRandomUserInTheRole(long pid, String role) {

  String[] users = caseMgmtService.getCaseRoleInstanceNames(pid).get(role);
  Random rand = new Random();
  int n = 0;

  if (users.length > 1) {
    n = rand.nextInt(users.length - 1);
  }

  return users[n];
}

In an ad hoc process definition, a case instance is created that allows the involved roles to create new tasks. You can create a new case instance for an empty case as below:

ProcessInstance processInstance = caseMgmtService.startNewCase("CaseName");

During the start of a new case, the parameter Case Name is set as a process variable name.

Alternatively, you can create a case instance the same way as new process instance:

ProcessInstance processInstance =
  runtimeEngine.getKieSession().startProcess("CaseUserTask", params);

The following example of a user task demonstrates the ad hoc capabilities of case management in Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite6.4.

Figure 15.1. User Task Case Management Example

The provided case instance example can have the following work flow: